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By Paul Sisson
North County Times
December 1, 2006
OCEANSIDE
---- Timing and the possibility of debris on the city's
beaches were the top concerns for a handful of homeowners who
attended a downtown Oceanside meeting Thursday night to hear
about the Army Corps of Engineers' plans for the San Luis Rey
riverbed.
The Corps was in town to hear people's opinions on a plan to
remove dense vegetation from the riverbed while attempting to
spare trees and other plants that are home to several
endangered bird species.
Though
no one said they thought the river should remain clogged, some
were not happy with the federal agency's proposed method for
getting the job done.
Paul Richter said he lives near the river and the tall
concrete-and-rock levees that parallel its banks. He said he
was not pleased to learn it will be late 2007 before the Corps
can start clearing a 170-foot swath along the river's banks
that would return the channel to a level of 100-year flood
protection.
A 100-year flood has a 1 percent chance of occurring each
year. Currently the Corps says the choked channel offers only
a 77-year level of protection to an estimated 1,000 homes and
businesses within the river's flood plain.
"Start tomorrow on this thing. Start right away,"
Richter said. "The birds will move."
Until the flood channel is rated at a 100-year level of
protection, residents must continue paying flood insurance
which averages about $400 per year for homes and about $1,000
per year for businesses.
Others at the meeting disagreed with the method of clearing
proposed for the channel. Plans presented Thursday night call
for contractors to use large mowing machines to knock down and
grind the material in the channel, leaving behind several
strips of untouched vegetation to serve as bird habitat. The
ground-up plants would be left on the riverbed to serve as a
kind of mulch.
Ruth Villalobos, chief planning officer for the Corps' Los
Angeles office, said the Corps also considered removing the
vegetation and using trucks to haul it to a landfill, but
added that doing so would be much more expensive and would
require about 9,000 dump-truck trips on local roads.
Some in the audience Thursday said that mulching the material
and leaving it in place would mean beaches covered with wood
chips the first time the San Luis Rey watershed sees a
significant storm.
John Daley, an Oceanside native, local historian and co-owner
of the 101 Cafe on South Coast Highway, noted that previous
large storms, such as one that did significant property damage
along the river in 1993, left beaches covered with trees and
other debris that washed downstream. But he predicted that a
profusion of mulch on the beach would be much more difficult
to clean up than large chunks of wood left in previous years.
"It's a nightmare for maintenance," Daley said.
"Especially for a city that caters to tourists and is
always bragging about its three miles of beaches."
Former Oceanside Mayor Terry Johnson spoke for the hundreds of
Oceanside residents who live upstream from the 7.2-mile flood
channel that runs from the ocean east to College Boulevard. He
noted that all homes in the river's flood plain east of
College will still have to pay flood insurance even after the
project is finally completed.
"It is unfortunate that there is not more funding to
continue the project upstream. I think the homeowners upstream
from College deserve just as much protection."
The flood control-levee system has been finished since 2000.
But because more than 100 pairs of endangered birds have been
found in the channel, the Corps has spent the last six years
negotiating with state and federal wildlife agencies. The
delay has allowed plants to grow into a dense forest in many
places. Experts have said the vegetation could dislodge and
cause a levee breach.
Jim Bassett, who said he has lived in Oceanside for 44 years,
was skeptical that the Corps and the city would ever finish
the project which was initially planned in the late 1960s.
"I don't know if I will live long enough to see this
thing sorted out," he said.
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